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About Us

Our Mission

The mission of the Volunteer & Civic Engagement Center is to provide the students, faculty, and staff at University of Illinois Springfield with opportunities to learn and lead by serving in the community. It is our goal to make service a part of the experience for every UIS community member and by doing so, to develop a commitment to civic and social responsibilities within individual students, faculty and staff as well as UIS as a whole.

We consider service and civic engagement to be educational opportunities, and as such we work to create experiences that increase UIS volunteers’ understanding of the context, current events, policies, and social issues associated with their service.

We consider service and civic engagement to be leadership opportunities, and as such we work to create experiences that develop UIS Volunteers’ ability to take ownership of projects, to provide vision to and execute programs and events that address real world issues, to manage peers, to lead meetings and committees, and to overcome obstacles in the path of executing their plans.

The Volunteer & Civic Engagement Center focuses on five broad areas of service:

Public Health

Sustainability

Civic Engagement

Youth and Education

Hunger and Homelessness

Our office seeks to maintain the following commitments to our community partners:

To foster reciprocal partnerships with community partners and community members

To work with community members to identify real needs

To conduct service with the community; not to do service to the community

To recognize excellence in service among our community partners

Our office seeks to maintain the following commitments to our UIS Volunteers:

To provide service that has an impact on both the community and volunteer

To provide opportunities to reflect on service

To connect service to social issues, current events, and policies

To provide opportunities to develop leadership and project management skills